Cat, Rat, and Dog
by Jijabi
Summary: An account of various pranks members of the Souma household play on each other. No romance. Chapter 3: Yuki strikes back. Today's victim: Kyo
1. Kyo on a Hot Tin Roof

Edited 1/31/05 Weird spacing fixed.Pointless Japanese removed.Minor corrections.

Disclaimer: Even the story is only partially mine.

* * *

Cat, Rat, and Dog

Chapter 1: Discovery Channel

Souma Kyo knew that in a household like his, the Discovery Channel was a dangerous thing. Even when there were only relatively tame programs on. Like ones on domestic cats. Especially ones on domestic cats. Kyo had come to this conclusion in a rather odd way. That is, it would be odd anywhere else. It could almost be considered normal in the residence of Souma Shigure. But the Discovery Channel was definitely the one to blame for this.

"Hold his legs tighter, Shigure! He'll run away!"

"He's struggling too much!"

Oh, yes. The Discovery Channel was to blame for his current predicament. Along with two sadistic cousins. It would explain why he was being held upside-down on the roof of his house, his arms restrained by Yuki, his legs by Shigure. Apparently, they had seen a show on the accursed Discovery Channel in which a cat had been held upside-down-which would explain his current position-and dropped-which would explain his future position. The aforementioned cat had flipped over and landed on its feet. Yuki and Shigure wanted to see if Kyo could do the same. In his human form.

Luckily for the pair-unluckily for Kyo-the one member of the household who would protest with a fervor worthy of an animal rights activist was currently at work. Kyo's only consolation was that Honda Tohru would be home soon. Just not soon enough.

"One, two."

Yuki and Shigure started to count in unison while swinging their cousin back and forth to build enough momentum to send him over the edge of the roof. Not that either would particularly care if he still hit the roof, but they were looking forward to this little experiment and didn't want to see Kyo escape.

"Three!"

Kyo was suddenly propelled over the edge of the roof. He looked up at the expectant faces of his cousins. Oh, yeah. He should probably turn soon, shouldn't he? His torso twisted at the waist pointing his face and shoulders towards the fast- approaching ground. His lower body soon followed in a similar spin. Kyo's feet swung down under him, moving his body from a horizontal position to a vertical one. His feet hit the ground with a thump and he allowed himself to crouch to the ground to better absorb the impact. His hands soon followed and he pushed himself up.

He took off at a dead run as soon as his upper body was far enough away from the ground to allow it. Voices drifted towards him.

"Hmmm. It worked."

"Did you not think it would?"

"Hoped, is more like it."

Kyo would later realize that in that after his fall he was in a panic-induced, instinct-driven state. And that his instincts had been telling him to run. These insights would be little comfort for the embarrassing memories of the next moments would bring.

Kyo didn't pay any notice to what was in front of him as he ran. If allowed to continue he might have run straight into-or possibly through-a tree. As it was, there was an obstacle that he did fail to avoid. It-or rather she-collapsed under the force of the escaping Souma. This resulted in two things. One, both force and resistance fell to the ground. Two, Souma Kyo was now a rather adorable orange cat.

Honda Tohru had been walking home from a rather harrying evening at the hospital that was her place of employment and had nearly reached the Souma house when Kyo had run into her, forcing both the ground, accompanied by a puff of orange smoke.

Her experiences with the Souma family explained the smoke, but left many possibilities for Kyo fleeing the property.

She glanced down at the cat lying on her. He was barely moving; only the rapid rise and fall of his furry orange stomach revealed him to be alive. She gently picked him up in one arm, her other grabbing his clothes and her bag in the other. She stood up and continued her walk back to their home.

When Tohru got closer to the house she was able to get a better idea of what Kyo had been running from. Shigure and Yuki could be seen standing on the roof, talking. She could only make out bits and pieces of their conversation, but "experiment" and "Discovery Channel" repeatedly reached her ears.

"I'm home!"

Their heads turned at her call. They both smiled broadly and called out a hearty "Welcome home!" just slightly out of sync. Shigure's face broke into an even wider grin when he saw what she held in her arm.

"Hey, Tohru-kun!" he yelled, " Could you come up here? And bring Kyo-kun!"

Something in Shigure's smile and tone of voice would have made anyone else uneasy, but not the naïve Tohru. She smiled and set down her bag and Kyo's clothes before climbing the ladder to the roof one-handed.

When she reached the roof, Shigure offered a hand to her to pull her the rest of the way up. He then took the still unconscious cat from her arm and shook him not so gently. Kyo was quick to recover and within a few seconds he was fully aware of his surroundings and company. Enough so to realize that struggling would be a good thing.

"Hey! Let me go, you stupid dog!" he cried.

"What are you doing, Shigure?" Tohru's voice joined Kyo's in protest as the novelist approached the edge of the roof.

"Oh, don't worry, either of you. It's just a little experiment. And you did so well last time, Kyo," reassured Shigure.

Again, Kyo and Tohru's voices joined each other.

"Experiment?"

"Last time?"

Shigure reached the edge of the roof. He twisted the struggling Kyo in his arms so his stomach faced the sky and his back was facing the ground two stories below. Then he let go.

Tohru's cries reached Kyo's ears as he fell. Again he noticed the faces above him, again he twisted, and again he landed on all four paws.

The orange feline turned and glared at his older cousin.

"You are SUCH an asshole, you know that!"

More screams reached his ears as he changed back to human.

* * *

Shigure was faced with a very angry Kyo-who resembled a hissing cat, complete with raised hackles-and an admonishing Tohru. Neither of these particularly bothered him. 

"Would you please tell me why you dropped Kyo off the roof. Twice," said Tohru, with a reproachful look towards Shigure.

"Well, it was on TV that cats always land on their feet, and well, I wanted to see if our kitty could too," explained Shigure, keeping his carefree and unrepentant smile on his face, "And Yuki helped, so why aren't you questioning him?"

"Because it was your idea," interjected Yuki.

Tohru sighed.

"Please just don't do anything like this in the future," pleaded Tohru.

Kyo glared at Shigure and Yuki. He would get even for this. The only question was how.

* * *

A/N: I hoped you enjoyed that. Can anyone guess what Kyo is going to do? Yuki will be the first to be tortured, just so you know. I would appreciate feedback so please review. If I don't get more than zero reviews I won't update. 


	2. Flowers for Yuki

Edited 1/31/05

Disclaimer: I don't own Fruits Basket. Yet. I hope to buy it off of e-bay. Well, the DVDs at the very least. J. K. Rowling owns the title. I own the plot.

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Cat, Rat, and Dog

Chapter 2: The Maze

Yuki was not a morning person. That was just one unchangeable part of him, like his ability to continuously beat Kyo in a fight or his inability to hug a normal girl without turning into a rat. He was just glad that his mornings were not always a sign of the day to follow, or he would have lived a worse life than he already had.

He did suppose, however, that his day would follow the precedent set by this particular morning. Kyo HAD been looking for revenge for a while, but Yuki had just expected the normal challenge to a fight.

THIS, however, was not what he had expected. Either Kyo was getting smarter or Shigure had planted the idea. He would have to believe the latter, for while Kyo could be clever-it wasn't a common occurrence but it had happened-he didn't have the torturous mindset required to come up with something so cruel.

It didn't truly matter whose idea it had been. The fact of the matter of was that Souma Yuki, prince of Kaiwara high school, had been rudely awakened by-of all things-"The Hampster Dance." On a Sunday.

He stumbled out of bed and quickly dressed-well, as quickly as someone half asleep can-and trudged out of his room. Unfortunately for his already poor humor, he walked straight into a smirking Kyo.

"So what did you think of your alarm?" chuckled the cat.

Yuki thought he might go into shock. Could Kyo truly have come up with a plan that did not involve challenging him or announcing that he would beat the rat in a fight?

"I normally wouldn't listen to any of Shigure's ideas, but this one just sounded like too much fun."

Apparently not. Yuki sent his cousin flying with one kick-a skill of his-and continued on his way downstairs to breakfast. Maybe he should ask Honda-san to make leeks for dinner. That would shut the cat up, and hopefully render him unconscious.

While at breakfast, Yuki had felt slightly nervous-not that he would ever show it, of course-under the smiling glances Shigure and Kyosent him. Shigure had his trademark grin on his face, while Kyo was wearing a smirk-the closest he ever came to a true smile. So, knowing that the music this morning would not be the last of it, he decided to spend the rest of his day either at his secret base or in the presence of Honda-san, where he could not be harmed.

This was why, later in the day, he was caught by surprise as Kyo shoved him into Honda-san and grabbed the rat that appeared from the cloud of smoke. He realized that something really bad was about to happen when he noticed that they were heading towards Kyo's room, too fast for Honda-san to realize what was happening. He started to hope that he would transform back soon.

He truly started to panic when he found that Shigure was already in Kyo's room with a large box in front of him. The panic turned into terror when he realized the box had partitions in it, forming a strange and seemingly random pattern of corridors. The box was a maze.

Yuki quickly took note of a small hole in one side with some cheese in front of it. They HAD to be joking.

"Well, Yuki, what do you think?" asked Shigure jovially, "It took us a while to make, but this will be SO much fun."

"Let me change back. Let me change back. Let me change back." Yuki muttered this mantra under his breath.

"We figured that you should be able to find your way out by the time you change back," Shigure continued, "If not, then I will be sorely disappointed in you."

Kyo set Yuki down in a corner of the maze and sat beside it, across from Shigure. They had apparently been preparing for this, for Kyo reached somewhere that Yuki couldn't see and pulled out snacks. Passing some Pocky to Shigure, he just leaned back and looked for all the world like the cat that got the canary. Not the sort of thing Yuki wanted to be thinking about right then. Yuki turned his attention to the maze. He knew exactly how he would handle this.

* * *

"Are you ever going to move?"

"No."

"Can't you do SOMETHING?"

"Why should I?"

A short silence followed this question.

"So you can get out sooner?" cautiously ventured Shigure.

"I have a feeling that you would only put me back in."

The recurrence of the earlier silence proved the accuracy of his prediction.

"So, you're just going to sit here until you change back?"

"That's the idea."

"Why?"

"It's better than scurrying around for who-knows-how-long."

The now familiar silence made another appearance.

"Well, this is just boring. Why can't you scurry around for a bit, just for fun?"

"Fun?"

Yuki was beginning to truly appreciate the silence. It showed that they needed to rely on increasingly weak arguments.

He was thrilled when he finally transformed back into his human self. Even if his feet were a little cramped.

"Um, Kyo-kun, what did you do with Souma-kun? I've been looking for-"

The door opened.

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A/N: So, what did you think? I was a little surprised when animegirl328 suggested something similar to what I was already going to write. That just goes to show that great minds think alike.

But animegirl328 also asked a couple questions that were later asked again by Yuri, in almost the exact same wording:

Why did Yuki help Shigure throw Kyo off the roof?  
Well, it seems to me that Yuki wouldn't mind doing something like that. Maybe it's just the way that I see them, but the way Kyo and Yuki act towards each other hints a certain animosity. And he's done some stuff like that before. Remember when you find out that Kyo hates leeks?

How did they catch Kyo?  
I would like to leave that to your imaginations, but I like to think that they ambushed him on the roof. ; P

I appreciate all of the positive feedback, and if you look now, you'll see that the separation of the paragraphs is a little screwy, but there are no weird symbols! Yay!

Next time: Kyo gets tortured again. This time it's all Yuki.


	3. Kyo in the Sky with Diamonds

Well, I know I took forever, but I finally updated. So, this chapter is longer than the previous two, and I'll be fixing up chapter one! Enjoy the Kyo-torture!  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. I don't own the title. I DO own the story, so THERE!  
  
Cat, Rat, and Dog  
  
Chapter 3: Nepeta cataria  
  
Kyo liked to take his time waking up. After all, if he tried to force himself to get up right away he would be too much like that shitty rat.  
  
Kyo especially wanted to take his time on this particular morning. For some reason, he had a feeling that something very bad was going to happen. The shitty rat was clever--he had to give him that--and could be rather malicious. The rat didn't need to have Shigure come up with any ideas.  
  
As Kyo lay in bed, he tried to imagine what Yuki could have possibly come up with. He HAD to have done something since it wasn't like him to just let Kyo get away with anything. It probably had something to do with his garden. The rat was OBSESSED with the thing. If so, he could expect leeks in his food, most likely planted in there without Tohru's knowledge or consent, or--in a more likely scenario--taking advantage of her occasional absent-mindedness.  
  
And as our favorite cat became increasingly awake, he began to notice the strange scent coming from somewhere by his bed. Deciding that there wasn't anything that could really be that bad on the other side of his bed-- after waking up next to Ayame there wasn't much that could faze him--so he turned over.  
  
He wasn't surprised to see a small green plant next to his bed. It was rather squat and bushy, and its leaves were giving off some sort of strange smell. It smelled rather.good, actually.  
  
Kyo leaned over to smell it a bit better. It really did smell quite good. Yes...good...very...  
  
Kyo's mind was starting to go fuzzy. He liked this. Yes.he really liked this.Kyo nibbled on the end of one leaf. It tasted good, too. Better than leeks. Yes, much better than icky leeks. Tohru wasn't going to make him eat icky leeks, was she? No, Tohru likes cute kitties and Tohru likes him and he liked Tohru and Tohru likes him and Tohru likes Yuki, but Kyo doesn't like the shitty rat, or leeks, or Shigure, but Tohru likes all of those things and he likes Tohru so he purrrrrrrrrrred...  
  
Kyo ate more of the leaf. He liked the leaf. He liked it so much that he ate another one and another one and another one...  
  
***  
  
Tohru was about to make breakfast when she noticed something on the counter, beside the other ingredients. She sighed, and put the leeks back with the other vegetables. This had to be the tenth time that Shigure had tried this. She had stopped falling for it after the fifth? Or was it the sixth time? She knew she should be embarrassed, but Kyo-kun had reassured her that it wasn't her fault. She knew that it was, but it wasn't like her to make a big fuss once everything had been sorted out.  
  
She had been just about to start the rice when Kyo-kun came downstairs. She had already known something was wrong--Souma-kun and Shigure had been up for nearly an hour and Souma-kun was already awake. She didn't know exactly how wrong everything was until she realized that Kyo- kun was purring. Kyo-kun NEVER purred, not even when he was a cat!  
  
She was so busy wondering what could be wrong with Kyo-kun that it took her a minute to realize that he was rubbing against her arm in a very feline manner! That was more than enough to freak out the shy teenager. Her body stiffened, her hair bristled, and she let out a squeak, which was apparently loud enough for the other two Souma to hear from the next room.  
  
"Honda-san?"  
  
"Tohru-kun?"  
  
Yuki and Shigure stepped into the kitchen, their voices filled with worry. After seeing their friend's predicament, however, their reactions were rather different.  
  
Shigure--who was by nature likely to laugh at anything that appeared even REMOTELY amusing--was unable to control his laughter.  
  
Yuki on the other hand was ready to kill. As always, it was hard to tell at first glance, but the glint in his eyes was distinctly homicidal.  
  
Yuki had expected Kyo to act like an idiot. He did. He expected him to act more like the stupid cat he was. He did. What Yuki had NOT expected was for Kyo to be so...so...touchy-feely. Especially with Honda-san. Yuki was NOT happy about this.  
  
Kyo, on the other hand seemed to be having a wonderful time. He had a big smile on his face and was purring and rubbing up against Tohru, marking her as something safe and friendly. This much contact with someone of the opposite gender resulted in the inevitable. There was a pop and a burst of orange smoke, and Kyo was rubbing Tohru's ankles, since his feline form didn't allow him to reach much higher for prolonged periods of time.  
  
The change from purring teenage boy to adorable purring cat allowed Tohru to relax. Cats are cute. Purring cats are cuter. It's hard not to relax around a purring cat.  
  
And relax Tohru did. She knelt down and started to pet Kyo. In the back of her mind she realized that he would probably be very angry as soon as he returned to normal, but he was too adorable as a cat.  
  
So Tohru kept petting Kyo, and Kyo kept purring, and Shigure kept laughing, until Yuki figured that his dearest older brother might like to make something in orange cat hair. He also decided that Honda-san might not appreciate it, so he left the room to make it easier to resist the urge.  
  
***  
  
Eventually, Shigure left to write, Tohru stopped petting Kyo, and Kyo went up to the roof to sun. Tohru wasn't sure how to tell him that he might want to go somewhere more private until he changed back, but as he didn't react to anything she said, she figured that--for some strange reason--he didn't care. After an hour, she assumed that he must have gone back to his room after he changed back.  
  
She was wrong.  
  
Kyo was, in fact, human, nude, and still on the roof. Of course, he realized none of this. In fact, he didn't really notice anything, except that the sun was nice and warm today and that he was happy to be alive.  
  
It was at about this point that Kyo started to realize that something was wrong with him. The haze in his mind was starting to clear and he was becoming more aware of what exactly was going on. After a few minutes, he was ignoring the sun and the warmth and he was no longer happy to be alive. He was back to his normal pessimistic, grumpy, and rather depressing mindset.  
  
He also noticed that he was naked and on the roof.  
  
That was not good.  
  
So, with a curse, he jumped off the roof and ran into his room as fast as he possibly could. Fortunately, Tohru was in another area of the house entirely. He quickly got dressed. After that, he tried to remember the events that had led to his being naked on the roof. He remembered waking up, turning over, and...the plant.  
  
The plant was still next to his bed. Careful not to even smell it, he picked it up and carried it to the kitchen. In another strange bit of good luck, Tohru was in there. He carried it over to her and set the pot down on the counter.  
  
"Oh, good morning, Kyo-kun!" chirped the perpetually cheerful girl.  
  
Kyo's response was less than cheerful.  
  
"Do you know what this is?"  
  
Tohru looked at it quizzically for a moment.  
  
"It looks like mint. Why?"  
  
"No reason," grunted Kyo.  
  
He left the kitchen to return to the roof. Why would MINT make him forget anything?  
  
***  
  
Yuki left his room and walked down to the kitchen. By his estimates, Kyo should be back to his regular, stupid self by now. When he got there, he saw the plant he had left in Kyo's room the night before sitting on the counter by Tohru. Ah. The stupid cat WAS back to normal and he had figured out the cause.  
  
Tohru turned to face him.  
  
"Souma-kun? Do you know what type of mint this is?"  
  
Or maybe the stupid cat really WAS too stupid to recognize the plant.  
  
"Of course, Honda-san. It's--"  
  
***  
  
Kyo was sick to his stomach. It was for this reason that he was doubled over, vomiting up everything in his stomach. Only, the only thing that seemed to be in his stomach was about a dozen leaves from the plant. Had he EATEN it? What would possess him to do THAT?  
  
He had to get something to rinse the taste out of vomit out of his mouth. Milk would be nice. So Kyo headed back to the kitchen, where he saw the shitty rat talking to Tohru.  
  
"Nepeta cataria, commonly known as catnip."  
  
Kyo froze. CATNIP!? He had eaten CATNIP!? And the shitty rat knew!? He was going to kill that stupid, dirty, shitty rat! He jumped into the room and started to attack Yuki.  
  
Unfortunately, even his attempted surprise attack didn't work. Yuki just kicked him through the walls as always. And as Kyo tried to recover from smashing through the wood and paper screens, Yuki just sighed.  
  
"I'm not sure why you bother attacking ME. It's Shigure who provided the seeds and the idea. I don't see you attacking HIM."  
  
It was about then that the two cousins realized what they had been doing wrong. If they continued in this manner, it would last forever. But why attack each other when someone else continued to amuse himself by masterminding the pranks and maintaining immunity?  
  
The two were for once in complete agreement.  
  
"Shigure," growled Kyo.  
  
"I have a plan," said Yuki, "And I'll need your help Honda-san."  
  
***  
  
Well, it's Shigure's turn. He'll get it next time. As for why he was on Kyo's side last time: He's not really on anyone's side. He's having fun tricking them both. That's just how he is.  
  
Thanks for reading! Please review! 


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